Low carbon energy transitions workshop

On March 21st and 22nd 2012, members of 3S are leading a workshop on actor dynamics in energy transitions as part of its role within the £2.3 million Transition Pathways to a low carbon economy project. Transitions Pathways is a 4-year consortium project involving nine UK universities co-funded by the EPSRC and E.ON. Bringing together engineers, economists, historians and social scientists the project has sought to develop and evaluate transition pathways for a 60% CO2 emissions reduction by 2050 focusing on the low carbon electricity system.

The Transition Pathways project is contributing to the growing body of work on sustainability transitions, which seeks to understand the evolution of complex, socio-technical systems. In part this field seeks to understand the sites and modes of intervention with a view to informing the purposive ‘steering’ of the system. This has led to questions emerging surrounding the democratic implications of such interventions and their governance. Such concerns also relate to the ‘narrow’ way in which actor dynamics are sometimes theorized within the transition literature.

In order to explore these issues, this 2 day workshop will seek to draw on insights from a range of social science perspectives to undertake a system wide exploration of the range, modes and sites of participation in low carbon transitions. It is intended that that it will make some substantive steps towards the development of a research agenda that takes seriously the theoretical, methodological and governance implications that are raised by engagement with wider conceptions of socio-technical participation.

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Transitions to Sustainability

Transitions research recognizes that current environmental problems represent formidable societal challenges, whose solution requires deep structural changes in key areas of human activity, but that existing systems tend to be very difficult to ‘dislodge’ because they are stabilized by various lock-in processes that lead to path dependent developments and ‘entrapment’. In recent years, research at UEA has been developing tools for the assessment of sustainability transitions, developing theory, and conducting empirical research on ‘grassroots’ innovations (in a range of empirical domains including housing, food, complementary currencies, community energy projects, and transport). The current focus of research is on the role of culture, civil society and social movements in transition processes.

Participation and Engagement

The rise of public participation in science and the environment in all its forms – ranging from institutionalised invited spaces of engagement to those that are uninvited and citizen-led – has the potential to empower citizens, enhance social justice and the quality of decisions, but also to close down, disempower and exclude. Research under this theme involves the study of democratic experiments and innovations in participatory governance. These are reconfiguring relationships between science, policy and society and coproducing knowledges, appraisals and commitments in response to sustainability challenges.

About 3S

We conduct world-leading research on the social and political dimensions of environment and sustainability issues. 3S is based in the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, UK.